Mateo set the guitar in the corner, helped me finish buckling the saddle, and handed the reins up to me after I mounted. “Wait,” he said, moving toward the guitar. He picked it up and handed it to me. “Take her this. Tell her that I either want her to take it with her, so she can remember us, or bring it back with her, so we can hear her play again tonight.”
I stared at my little brother a moment—seeing for the first time a friend, not just a follower—then took it. My eyes ran over the strings, remembering Zara’s small fingers flying over them, her eyes closed, feeling the music, the sheer joy that practically cried out from her when she played, as if she herself were the instrument more than the guitar. That was the magic of my beloved, I decided. She was an instrument, ready to sing with everything her Maker had crafted her to be.
“You, little brother, are becoming a man,” I said, slipping the strap on and positioning the guitar on my back. “Gracias.”
“Bring her home,” Mateo returned simply.
“I will do my best,” I said. And then I exited the stables and whipped my mare into a full gallop.
CHAPTER 35
ZARA
When I reached Tainter Cove, I slid from the back of my horse and went to his head, petting his nose and cheeks and neck. “You’ve been good to me, boy. Thank you,” I said, pulling his big face close and kissing him. “I wish I were staying long enough to name you. Make Javier name both you and his sweet mare, okay?” My voice cracked on the last word.
He snorted and pulled his head away and I smiled wistfully. Even he didn’t want to say a proper adios, it seemed.
I pulled off the saddlebag and then patted the horse’s rump. “Head on home if I disappear, boy,” I said. He ran off a bit, but as I moved down the dune to the center of Tainter Cove, I noticed he hovered in the distance—as if waiting for me to entice him back, and yet ready to go running off if he chose. Perhaps he echoed what I was feeling…not certain I wanted to go, but not at all certain I wanted to stay either.
I plopped down on the sand, just a few feet from where the waves ended their claim to soil and receded back to the sea, again and again. I wrapped my fossils in Abuela’s shawl and tucked them into one arm while holding the lamp with both hands. The sun was setting behind a marine layer, making the sky a super-pale pink and purple display, something out of a winter’s eve rather than the heat of summer with its usual vibrant oranges and corals.
Honestly, I’d hoped for a bigger, better send-off, in my romantic heart-of-hearts. “Ehh, it figures,” I said, deciding the unsatisfying sunset was just like all the rest of this big exit, never destined to satisfy—only wrapping tendrils around my wrists and ankles to hold me back. I lifted the lamp in my hands and turned it over, wondering over all I’d experienced since the moment I first fished it from the pool. My fingers traced the odd, ancient script, and I wished I could Google it, find out more about it. In 1840, my only chance would be to travel east and hunt down some archeology scholar to see if he could tell me more.
And not hope for a whole lot. Because back then—back here—resources were limited.
Some mysteries will forever be mysteries, Grillita, Abuela used to say, with a shrug of her round shoulders. I’d always wanted to know the next thing—like if God was the Creator, how did he begin? Or why love didn’t find everyone, even good people. Or why good people had to suffer. Now I wanted to know why he’d sent me back to 1840 to fulfill all three of my wishes, but then made me realize all the reasons to go home.
Oh, how I missed Abuela. I wished, so wished, she was here with me now to tell me what to do…or that I could go home to her. It would make my parting so much easier.
If I could even go at all. I still didn’t know. I glanced over my shoulder to the empty dune behind me, feeling both relieved and hurt at once. There was nothing but clumps of beach grass, waving in the breeze, as if saying good-bye.
Javier hadn’t followed me. He wasn’t here. He was doing it. Letting me choose. Not interfering.
And while I’d wanted that, recognized that it might open the hidden passageway that was closed to me before, it left me feeling more hollow and sad than ever before. I wished he were here—that we could have a real farewell—but he wasn’t.
He wasn’t.
I wanted to cry, but it seemed all my tears were spent.
I turned the lamp in my hands again. God had sent me here for a purpose. To grow me, to show me how much more there was to life—even more than what I’d wished for. And while so many bad things had happened, there had been far more good. I’d forever treasure those memories.
Or would I forever be trying to match or better them?
Was it even possible in my own time to capture what I’d found here?
Well, I won’t know if I don’t try. God wouldn’t let me return if it wasn’t for my best, right?
Or would he again let me choose for myself, as Javier had? For good or bad?
I let out a guttural cry of frustration. I was making myself crazy, arguing both sides.
With a sigh, I stood up, brushed the sand from my skirts, and moved to the edge of the water, feeling the cool wave wash around my bare toes, the arches of my feet, my ankles. My heels began to sink as the water receded, the water seeping up on the hem of my skirts.
The pale tangerine sun was just meeting the sea with its bottom edge, sinking now, as I might sink into my own time again. I put my hand on the lamp and closed my eyes.
A whine behind me made me pause, and then turn my head.
“Centinela,” I said wistfully, stepping toward her and shifting the things in my hands to pet her. She wouldn’t understand my disappearing.
Or had she always understood best of all?
I knelt in the damp, cool sand, and for the first time she allowed me to pull her face close to mine. “Thank you, girl. Thank you for being my sentinel, my guardian. You’ve given me comfort.”
Movement at the top of the dune drew my eye next.
Javier.
I glanced over my right shoulder at the sun, a third of the way down now. Something inside me, deep inside, told me that if I was going to go, I had to go now. Before the sun was gone. Hurry.
But I could not look away as Javier dismounted and strode down the sand with long, powerful, decisive steps.
He walked all the way to me, wordlessly wrapped one hand around my lower back, the other behind my neck and pulled me to him for a long, tender, thorough kiss. Then he stepped back, leaving me somewhat dazed.
“Ja-Javier,” I said. “I-I thought you were going to leave this to me.” I looked up into his dark eyes, as he shoved aside his curly dark hair.
“I am,” he said, with a firm nod, everything about him that I loved back in that instant. It was as if he’d been shaken out of his reverie, his fear, his frustration, and he had returned to himself. “You will decide this on your own. Or leave it to God. But I could not let you leave without giving you all of me, Zara. Reminding you of all the love I have for you.”
He fingered the strap on his shoulder, and for the first time, I saw that he carried the guitar. “Mateo sent you this. He wanted you to have it.”
After a second’s hesitation, I took the guitar from him, and as it passed from his hands to mine, memories of every time I’d played it flooded through me, like flashbacks in a movie, one after the other. It reminded me of all I was, all I had here, in 1840, every time I played it. It made me remember my potential, my breadth and height and width and length in ways that only Javier’s love—and God’s—had made me remember, like a long-distant promise, awakened and realized.
Then Javier stepped back, palms cupped, head bowed. “Do what you must, beloved,” he whispered. Stay, my heart clanged, now more like an alarm. Stay, stay, stay…
I tore my eyes from him to the setting sun, now just the top third of the oddly pale orb visible. Run. My head throbbed, like a drum. Run.
I felt the pressure in my chest, my mind. It was now or never.
N
ow…and forever.
Slowly, I took the lamp, turned…paused…breathed…and stared at the setting sun, wondered one last time if I was supposed to stay or supposed to try and return home. One last try? To see if I was meant to be there, even if my heart sent ribbons around everything it could touch, making me want to stay here?
Stay, Zara. Stay.
Run! You idiot! Run!
I weighed the lamp in my hands. Turned it over, tracing the odd lettering, the ancient, burnished gold reflection, the missing spout.
I remembered the magical moment I’d pulled it from the waves, back home.
Thought of when I’d remembered what I’d told Abuela I wished for most. Remembered awakening to this, this time, this place, this reality.
Then I turned as the sun trembled, ready to sink beneath the waves, casting a serpentine golden path in my direction as if it beckoned me one last time. I set the guitar down, along with my things and allowed the shawl to drop with them to the sand.
And then I threw the lamp as far and as deep into the sea as I could.
CHAPTER 36
JAVIER
I was confused, at first, as she set down her things. She was little more than a blurry, dark form against the giant, pale-pink setting sun. Staring in her direction made my eyes water. Distantly, I thought of her as a kind of fairy, blowing into my life like magic, and about to blow out of it again, when my eyes focused on the object she’d hurled, in an arc, toward the sea.
My vision narrowed, and I watched the golden lamp, gleaming in an odd pink and purple reflection as it turned, over and over, sailing past the first two waves and slicing toward the third, farthest out.
She threw it, I told myself, as if trying to convince myself it was true. The lamp is gone.
Relief and triumph flooded through me at first. She’s staying! But then immediately after, angst and horror. She’s trapped here! God, what does this mean? Could it mean…?
After a brief splash, the ancient lamp disappeared, no sign of it visible when the next wave rose. No rings of impact, no trace of it on the water. Even though it felt like a hundred-foot wave crashing over me.
I blinked, trying to make sense of it, but then she was moving toward me, striding across the sand as intently as I’d moved toward her, jumping up into my arms. I turned her around and around, crying and laughing and kissing her. Was it real? Was it true?
“Zara,” I said, setting her down and clutching her cheeks in both my hands, holding her away from me so that I could look into her eyes, “are you certain? Are you certain?”
“Never more certain of anything in all my life,” she said in a growl, fresh tears running down her face again too, tipping up her chin for more kisses.
I think I laughed more than I kissed her in those moments after the lamp left us forever.
Finally, I released her. Then I bent down on one knee, fishing for the ring in my inside pocket. Ever since Monterey, I’d carried it there. There were moments in the past days when I’d believed this moment was destined never to come.
But here it was.
Holding the ring with two fingers, I took her hand with the other and looked up into her sweet face. “Zara Ruiz, you have turned my life upside down and inside out, and it’s all been for good. I will spend the rest of my life, in this undetermined land, determined—always and forever—to do right by you and the love we share, so help me God. If you love me as I do you, might you agree to be my bride?”
“If I love you?” she whispered, tears streaming down her cheeks. She reached down and cradled my face with both of her small hands. “I think I’ve always loved you, Javier.” She smiled. “Perhaps not on that first day we met…but it was not long after.” I grinned with her, but waited for her to answer. Slowly, she nodded her head. “And, sí, Javier. I will marry you.”
I leaped up and held her again in my arms, this time not swinging her around, just standing there, trying to fully comprehend that she was staying, that she loved me, and that she was going to be my bride.
“I think,” I began, “that I just got my three wishes.”
Grinning, I slipped the ring on her finger. It was an old band of gold set with a new sapphire gem that had reminded me of the lamp and Tainter Cove’s peculiar green-blue color the moment I saw it.
“I love it,” she said. “It’s beautiful, Javier,” she breathed. “So when shall we marry?”
I bent down to kiss her tenderly. “We have the gown, right? Why not tonight?”
She laughed under her breath. “Tomorrow,” she said decisively. “Tomorrow I shall become Zara Ruiz de la Ventura. Here, I think, at Tainter Cove.”
“Hmm, Mama will probably argue against that.”
“But I shall win that argument,” she said with a wink.
And I knew she would.
Then, as if in a dream, we gathered her things, I strapped the guitar over my shoulder, and we walked hand in hand to the horses, who had wandered away to graze along the dunes.
Centinela loped about in a wide circle, again and again, as if sensing the celebration in each of our hearts. And the horses waited, noses together, as if conferring themselves.
“Do you think they know?” Zara asked in a whisper, reaching up to nuzzle her gelding.
“Know what?” I scoffed, feeling no rancor.
“Do you think they recognize pure love, sure love?” she asked, stroking her gelding’s nose. “Love that was destined, beyond time?”
And as she turned to look at me, I was already removing the distance between us, taking her fiercely, madly into my arms. “Do they know? Mark my words, mi corazon. The very stars will cry out tonight, singing of what we know here, now, in this time, between us. No?”
She stared up into my eyes, trembling but in an odd way, more sure than I’d ever seen her. “Yes. Yes.”
And in the midst of her last yes, I claimed her lips with mine, thinking with her, Yes. Yes, yes.
CHAPTER 37
ZARA
The girls awakened me, pouncing on my bed when they could not wait any longer. Judging from the sun, when I sat up and stretched, peeking out of one eye, it was after eight. After ten! I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept past sunrise. Probably back in my own time…but no longer my time…
“My goodness, you all must have been so quiet! I didn’t hear a thing!”
“Mama gave the whole household very strict orders,” Estie said earnestly, “to be ever so quiet. She didn’t want the bride to be awakened.” Her eyes lit up with the word bride, as if she’d said something magical.
“She said every bride needs a good night’s sleep so she looks her best,” Francesca added, sitting down on the edge of my bed after opening up the shutters on both of my windows. It was going to be a beautiful day.
“The maids are bringing up hot water,” Francesca said. “For a bath,” she added, as if I might not figure that out. “Mama said it should be extra deep. And to bring you her special soap.”
“An extra deep bath? Special soap? Sleeping in? I must be a princess,” I said. My little sisters, I thought. I reached out and took Francesca’s hand, and then Estie’s too. “Today, we become sisters!” I said with a grin. “I’ve never had sisters! Or brothers…”
They smiled back at me, looking as happy as I felt. How lucky was I to land with a family who would so easily take me in as their own? “It feels so right,” I said, “to be your sister. There’s something about your family that makes me feel as if you were waiting for me.”
“We were, in a way,” Francesca said shyly.
“It’s like you were the missing puzzle piece!” Estie added.
I thought about that. They thought of me as the missing piece, while to me, they were the entire other part of the puzzle. Thank you, Lord, I prayed. Thank you for this blessing. I was overwhelmed to the point of tears.
“No, no, no!” Francesca said firmly, rising in alarm. “Mama also said we must not make you cry! It will make your eyes swell!”
&
nbsp; I giggled. “That’s true.” I’d never been one of those pretty sort of criers. Which made me all the angrier, when I started crying because I was angry. Which then made me angrier…The thought of all of that made me laugh. “No more tears,” I said, wiping my eyes. “At least until sunset, when I marry your brother.”
Their faces lit up, and they squeezed my hands as the maids arrived, four of them, each carrying two buckets of steaming water. A man came with the copper tub, depositing it in the center of my bedroom floor, as if embarrassed. The maids, however, each looked at me with shy smiles. I met their grins with my own, thanking each of them by name as they exited. I knew I was a girl from the future, but I could do my best to bring a bit of the future back to the past.
“Take your bath,” Francesca said, unwrapping a treasured, half-worn bar of lavender soap. “And we’ll be back to attend you.”
They wanted me to keep to my room all day. I felt a little like trapped Rapunzel in her tower, without as much hair. I was in turns, spun up—pacing in agitation—frustrated, and calm, lost in my dreams of what was to come. But as the hours crawled by, even as Maria wound my hair in rags—positioning them high on my head, so they might dry faster—and Consuela helped me dress only as far as stockings, stays and shift. I looked longingly at the beautiful gown, strewn across my bed, and just wanted to get down to that beach. See Javier. Be his, at last.
The girls peeked in every so often, and then Adalia and Alvaro arrived. We sat down on either edge of the bed, letting Alvaro crawl and roll between us. “I cannot tell you how happy this day makes me,” Adalia said, smiling so broadly that her almond-shaped eyes became mere slits. “If Dante were here, he’d be with Javier right now, teasing him mercilessly about your wedding night.”
I grinned and ducked my head, feeling the heat of a blush rise, and fingered the edge of the blanket. “I suppose he’s missing his dad, and his brother, today especially.”
Four Winds (River of Time California, Book 2) Page 20